The difference here that many do not understand is that, for an association to be cooperative it must be beneficial to both or all parties involved—not merely in an emotional sense, but in a functional and/or adaptive sense. That is, while reciprocity and mutualism will allow individuals and/or groups of individuals to be better off as a result of their associations, those that sacrifice their resources for the good of others while getting nothing in return that renders it a win-win relationship will simply compromise their survivability in an evolutionary sense.

Yet it is in Part VII, “A Planetary Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” (of the Secular Humanist Manifesto from post I of this series) that such non-adaptive sacrificial behavior is advocated, not just within nations, but also between nations, consistent with the Second Bill of Rights proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s. For here it was declared that, in addition to citizens being protected from harm to person and property with regard to that acts of others by constitutional law, including restraints on government power (sometimes referred as “negative rights” in defining what the government cannot do to citizens), government should be empowered by constitutional law to provide citizens with the necessities of life (these being “positive rights” in defining what the government can do for citizens).

In a more-fundamental evolutionary sense, this is not only a problem because redistributed government benefits received by some must come at the expense of others; it is a problem because there is an evolutionary biological law which dictates that what is rewarded will increase in prevalence while what is punished will decrease in prevalence. Hence, one can expect that those receiving benefits via government redistribution will increase in scope while those called on to provide the resource for redistribution will decrease in scope.

And it is with more individuals living off the works of others and fewer individuals willing to work to support others that a decrease in overall societal production, efficiency, innovation and advancement will occur. This means a degraded total economic performance for a society, which will in turn mean a degraded military performance for a society.